Data Protection Stupity

I normally desperately try to avoid any contact with any call centre unless I really have to and today's experiences remind me why.

Having just moved to new build house my wife used the TV Licensing automated system to change the address of our TV Licence. Today we get 4 letters in the same post consisting of 2 reminders (1 dated 2011), a warning of a site visit and threat of court action.

So I rang their call centre, ploughed through their incredibly irritating voice menus and eventually spoke to what passed for a real person. Despite having the name of the licence holder, the previous address etc they wouldn't help because I didn't know what payment method my wife had used. Now up to a point I can go along with this but all I was trying to do was to make sure the licence had actually been transferred but they wouldn't even say if there was a TV licence in place at the new address which seems unreasonable.

And then just for fun the Vodafone signal has disappeared, had been working fine. We have a business account so ring Vodafone and give number. Now despite owning the business I'm not down as the primary contact so I can understand that I wouldn't be able to change anything on the account but my question was purely can you tell me if there is a problem with the mast in the local area. Nope, data protection.

Turns out that the mast is broken and as we use the mobiles for primary customer contact this is more than annoying but I can't possibly see why they can't tell you that.

A bit more thought might be appropriate

"Hello, I'm interested in your product, how much is it?"

"£250 or £350 depending on a single machine or site licence"

"Can you drive to Liverpool/Birmingham/somewhere round the M25 to demo it?"

"No"

If you haven't worked out what the point of the above is then I'd suggest you need to think a bit more about the costs involved.

From our office to Liverpool is 202 miles

The AA say this will take 3 hours 26 minutes each way.

So approximately 400 miles and 7 hours travelling time.

Let's say my car does 30 mpg (it doesn't) that's around 13 gallons of fuel (59 litres) @ 141.90 per litre (diesel) costing around £83.

(If I use the AA running costs of a minimum of 41p per mile it's £164)

And let's say my time is worth £30 an hour (which is a very low estimate) that's another £210.

So in order to maybe get a sale worth between £250 - £350 I need to spend at least £293.

Doesn't work for me. If I got the sale at £250 and assuming I don't factor in my time at all and just take into account the fuel cost I will have made around £160 on a very good day.

If I don't get the sale at the very least I've wasted 8 hours and spent £83. During this time I can't answer calls, develop code or do anything else productive.

So if you want an on site demo of a product that costs £250 I'm going to charge you £350 for the demo.